Cliff Cornell's tough exterior dissolves into tears as he reflects on his return to the Army four years after he fled to Canada to avoid the war in Iraq.
"I'm nervous, scared," Cornell said, wiping puffy eyes beneath his sunglasses Monday at a Savannah hotel after a three-day bus ride from Seattle. "I'm just not a fighter. I know it sounds funny, but I have a really soft heart."
Cornell, 29, of Mountain Home, Ark., planned to turn himself in to military police Tuesday at nearby Fort Stewart, where he'll likely face criminal charges for abandoning his unit before it deployed to Iraq in January 2005.
He said he fled because he doesn't think the war has improved the lives of Iraqis, and he couldn't stomach the thought of killing.
"During my training, I was ordered that, if anyone came within so many feet of my vehicle, I was to shoot to kill," said Cornell, who enlisted in 2002 but never deployed to war. "I didn't join the military to kill innocents."
The Army artillery specialist made it to Canada in 2005 and soon started a new life working at a grocery store on Gabriola Island in British Columbia.
Cornell's exile ended last week when he crossed the U.S.-Canada border into Washington state. He left voluntarily to avoid deportation.
"There are probably another three or four who are imminently under threat of deportation, and we're trying hard to fight that," Robidoux, spokeswoman for the Toronto-based War Resisters Support Campaign said.
The lower house of Canada's Parliament passed a nonbinding motion in June urging that U.S. military deserters be allowed to stay in Canada, but the Conservative Party government has ignored the vote.
During the Vietnam War, thousands of Americans took refuge in Canada, most of them to avoid the military draft. Many were given permanent residence status that led to Canadian citizenship, but the majority went home after President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty in the late 1970s.
The Army has listed Cornell as a deserter since a month after he left, but he hasn't been formally charged with any crimes, said Fort Stewart spokesman Kevin Larson.
After returning to Fort Stewart, Cornell could be placed into a unit or be held at a local jail. The unit Cornell was assigned to when he fled - the 1st Battalion, 39th Field Artillery Regiment - disbanded in March 2006.
Cornell's attorney said he hopes the Army shows some leniency since Cornell avoided the war because of his political convictions.
"This is different from someone leaving for selfish reasons," Branum said. "This is someone who said, 'I'm not going to kill civilians."'
It is disgusting how Canada can deport a war resister who refuses to fight a war because the war is illegal, but know it refused to fight that same war for the same reason.
Police in Brazil's Amazon rain forest are investigating three native Indians suspected of murdering and eating a 21-year-old handicapped man in a rare case of cannibalism, local authorities said on Tuesday.
The Indians of the Kulina tribe near the Peruvian border are accused of having killed and eaten the insides of Ocelio Alves de Carvalho, a 21 year-old student in the town of Envira in Amazonas state.
"The body was quartered and then carved up with more than 100 cuts -- we think they ate his insides," Sgt. Osmildo Fereira da Silva of the state police in Envira told Reuters.
The three Indians apparently boasted of eating Carvalho's heart and liver to relatives in a reservation called Aldeia do Cacau, Fereira said.
Police interrogated a suspect but did not arrest anybody, Fereira said.
The Kulina do not practice cannibalism and police suspect the three Indians were drunk or took drugs.
"Alcoholism is widespread among Indians throughout the region," said Inspector Pablo Souza, with the Federal Police in the state capital Manaus.
"This is not usual in the region, it seems like an isolated case of homicide," he said.
There are nearly 1 million native Indians in Brazil, whose lands make up 12 percent of the country's vast territory.
While some live on large reservations in the rain forest, many are cramped in ghetto-like reservations in Mato Grosso do Sul state, which borders Bolivia and Paraguay.
I'm wondering if this "news story" is even true, or if it has anything to do with the recent attemps to push the Native Indians off their land. Propaganda against a people a government is trying to get out of the way almost never fails.
U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden has outlined some of the key points of the new U.S. administration's foreign policy, including what he calls the collective effort needed to fight global terrorism and Washington's willingness to talk to Iran about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
The United States is willing to talk to Iran, but he warned that Tehran must abandon its "illicit nuclear program" and "support for terrorism" or it will continue to face pressure and isolation, Biden said in a speech Saturday to world leaders attending the Munich Security Conference.
"The Iranian people are a great people. The Persian civilization is a great civilization. But Iran has acted in ways that are not conducive to peace in the region or to the prosperity of its people; its illicit nuclear program is but one of those manifestations," he said. "Our administration is reviewing policy toward Iran, but this much is clear: We will be willing to talk."
"President Obama has made clear that he will seek a new way forward, based on mutual interests and mutual respect," Biden said.
"In the Muslim world, a small and I believe very small, number of violent extremists are beyond the call of reason. We will and we must defeat them. But hundreds of millions of hearts and minds in the Muslim world share the values we hold dearly. We must reach them," he said.
A number of world leaders have expressed concerns that Iran may try to develop nuclear weapons, although the country's president has insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
Oh yea here comes that Iran is a threat bullshit again. I'm still wondering what happened to that 22 year veteran CIA agent that sued the government. I'm not sure people remember him, he was the one that was fired for refusing to falsify his reports. He sued the government to declassify his reports that showed Iran has no nuclear weapons. He was also the same guy who said Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and we all know how that turned out. I'm wondering if this guy was still alive. He was mentioned on Countdown with Keith Olbermann a few months ago, but I was unable to find any recent information on him. I hope he is still among the living.
Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu each claimed victory in an inconclusive general election that has both sides looking for possible partners in a coalition government.
With almost all the votes counted on Wednesday morning, Livni's Kadima party has claimed 28 seats, only one more than Netanyahu's conservative Likud party. Avigdor Lieberman's ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beteinu party had a strong showing, gaining four seats to finish with 15 seats. Defence Minister Ehud Barak's Labour party, Israel's ruling party for years, had its worst ever showing, winning just 13 seats. The Orthodox Shas party won 11 seats.
Several hours after polls closed, Livni and Netanyahu staged rival victory rallies.
"With God's help, I will lead the next government," Netanyahu told cheering Likud activists early Wednesday.
An hour later, Livni told her supporters that "the people have spoken, and they have chosen Kadima."
Livni called on Netanyahu to join a coalition government that she will lead.
Both Kadima and Likud will have to make alliances with other smaller parties in order to form a coalition government in the Knesset, the 120-seat parliament.
None of this matters really because the Palestinians are still going to be slaughtered.
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